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Comment by throwaway48476 | Hacker News Reader

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I disagree that the KGB played a meaningful part in the Civil Rights Movement, rather they saw the race schism like everybody else did and tried to aggravate it - but it backfired and the Civil Rights Act remains a pivotal victory in American history.

It’s now illegal to teach that perspective in Florida however as it falls under recent CRT laws and administrators are now fearful of any adjacent curriculum.

Regardless it’s really important to mention the Civil Rights movement now in the context of the Department of Education which was formed in part to enforce the Civil Rights Act (and later the Americans with Disabilities Act). Republicans are now tearing down the Department of Education. Effecting research and medical student loans TODAY (in my family) and much more TOMORROW.

Isn’t it an open secret that Germany’s bureaucracy is littered with Russian intelligence officers?

The whole WireCard scandal there really opened my eyes.

The success is that the Green party is now the biggest neocon and anti-Russia party in Germany.

I’ve seen that interview, but I’m surprised anyone watching it following the fall of the Berlin Wall and Glasnost would find it remotely credible. Soviet attempts to turn Americans and Western Europeans into Marxist-Leninnists who supported Communism were abject failures. The “brainwashing” went overwhelmingly in the other direction: citizens of Communist countries ended up wanting, by and large, to adopt the Western capitalist way of life.

That’s not to say that the KGB didn’t have some degree of influence on certain movements. But the overall picture that Bezmenov paints is laughably false with hindsight. The interview is from 1984, and I’m sure many in the KGB at that time really believed that their cunning plan to brainwash the West was working.

Western countries were full of communists before the liberal-tankie split. After ww2 the communists almost won the elections in Italy. It wasn't until the communists started pasting protesters with tanks that it became no longer socially acceptable to be a communist.

After the failure of world revolution only the subversion program remained. This was widely successful and is still ongoing.

A bunch of Americans went to join the communist experiment in the 20s and 30s. They saw what a disaster it was but the newspapers covered it up. The NYT famously declared that there was no famine in ukraine while millions starved. Of course the journalists were friends with Stalin.

As all conspiracy theories, this provides a simple explanation to circumstances that otherwise require complex answers, but it holds no water. The KGB was ineffective and inept. It didn't reach the masses, it didn't influence public opinion. Of course a former KGB agent selling his story must tell you otherwise, but most of these guys spent their whole career feigning successes to their superiors.

While they may feign success to their supervisors you need to look at the tangible results. They got germany to shut down their nuclear power plants and got the civil rights act passed. That's not ineffective.

And did "getting the Civil Rights Act passed" do anything to weaken America, or to strengthen the Soviet Union or expand its influence? No, it didn't. It made America more true to its ideals, thereby undercutting a Soviet propaganda point. It probably increased American influence with third-world countries, especially in Africa. All in all, a Soviet self-own, if they're going to take the credit.

If you think Chernobyl was orchestrated by the KGB, then yes. Sadly, I knew right away were this was heading. Ironically, Russia is more involved in pushing this false narrative than they were ever involved in the anti-nuclear power movement. And it only works by twisting facts. The Soviet Union tried to bolster the anti-nuclear arms movement, emphasize on arms, to stop the Americans from stationing nuclear weapons in Europe, which worried the Soviet leaders greatly - how Europe generates electricity was none of their worry. Lastly, nuclear disarmament is neither a KGB invention nor a KGB success.

Chernobyl was a result of cost cutting and incompetence. KGB just tried to cover it up.

Why would Russia push the 'false narrative' that they supported the anti nuclear power movement? They benefit enormously from replacing nuclear with their gas.

Nuclear disarmament is some miru mir thing.

> They got germany to shut down their nuclear power plants

Huh, so do they have an earthquake machine that caused Fukushima? Quick, someone tell that Jews-Space-Laser-Congresslady!

(Fukushima happened a few days before a German state election. Merkel, ever the opportunist and fearing a loss to the Green Party, finally said "We should accelerate the nuclear shutdown". The Greens won anyway).

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